Self Reliance
The first movie directed by Jake Johnson, star of “New Girl” and “Minx,” takes place in Los Angeles during the pandemic lockdowns. Called Self Reliance, it’s about a guy who spends 30 days trying to avoid being killed by unseen assailants while being filmed for the dark web., which wants him to stay alive so they’ll keep watching.
Sound like a breeze just have to be around people all day, every day. But “Self Reliance” and Johnson offer that it’s not as simple as you might think, especially for those of us who feel like we live life on the sidelines. When after a few days he gets too paranoid to bear that everyone around him could be one of the killers, he decides to ask his family for help. The premise is absurd and Tommy has been so distant from them since his father’s (Christopher Lloyd) abandonment bred years of resentment in him that his mother and sisters (Mary Holland and Emily Hampshire) are rightfully skeptical.
But instead of them, Tommy has to turn to strangers at this point in order to satisfy what has now become an actually existential need for companionship which is also where “Self Reliance” flirts with its most interesting takeaways about human connection and shaking ourselves out of our ruts. First he hires a bum off the street whom he takes to calling “James” (“I Think You Should Leave” titan Biff Wiff, all toothless grins and beardy smiles) to follow him around. They hit it off immediately and their friendship is easily the best part of the movie. (Shades of Nick Miller’s everlasting friendship with Tran on “New Girl” abound.) Then a Craigslist ad seeking other potential contestants leads him to effervescent Maddy (Anna Kendrick), another loner just looking for someone to ride out the rest of this thing with her.
At its core, “Self Reliance” is almost a metaphor for how we all had to dust off the cobwebs of social interaction after two years of staying inside our houses. These don’t feel like teachable moments so much as they do lessons, mostly in the middle act when Maddy uses her natural chipperness to push Tommy out of his comfort zone. It gets a little too “Garden State” at times, but Johnson puts a dark enough layer on their dynamic that it never threatens to become a full-blown treacly rom-com.
The problems come in when Johnson starts getting lost in the logistics of the game itself, clearly having too many ideas about what this contest could actually be or what it could do to Tommy but never really committing to any of them. Is it really a life or death game? Because there aren’t enough moments of specific danger, even as he realizes how funny it is to watch him being chased through the streets like he’s in “After Hours.” Is it, as another fellow contestant who finds Tommy and Maddy (GaTa) puts it, a comedy where people laugh at his expense? He doesn’t ever decide whether he wants to borrow more from “The Most Dangerous Game” or “The Truman Show,” leaving the resolution somewhere between satisfactorily dark or sunny.
For a comedy, it also has trouble with discrete jokes, instead relying on Johnson’s laconic persona and a couple extended ad lib bits (like minutes long riffing with a potential assassin about the dramatis personae of the “Super Mario” franchise), or just the absurdity of actors like Andy Samberg and Wayne Brady showing up as paid reps for this mysterious show. These moments are welcome but few and far between, and “Self Reliance” doesn’t have the guts to fully lean into dramedy in the way this ratio demands.
At various points throughout “Self Reliance,” a group of “production assistant ninjas” peek out from behind trees or around corners to talk to Tommy when he’s alone, telling him he’s “one of their favorites” and passing down instructions from production that they need to shake up the formula in order to keep the audience interested. I suppose it’s probably what being a reality show contestant or in Johnson’s case, an actor in the public eye must feel like, being forced into situations for someone else’s amusement.
These ideas end up being more interesting than what “Self Reliance” winds up going for: a comedy about friendship and connection. But even if it lands on this more pedestrian target, Johnson’s madcap screen presence keeps the thing afloat. I just hope his clear ambition gets to stretch beyond LA county next time around.
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